The Wolf's Hour Part 15

7.

Tosca, the tale of doomed lovers, was the presentation at the opera. The gargantuan building seemed to rise before Michael and Gaby like a sculpted stone monolith as they approached it along the Avenue de L'Opera in a battered blue Citroen. Mouse was at the wheel, considerably cleaner since he'd bathed and shaved this evening. Still, his eyes were hollow and his face deeply lined, and though his hair was slicked back with pomade and he wore fresh clothes-courtesy of Camille-there was no mistaking him for a purebred gentleman. Michael, wearing a gray suit, sat in the backseat next to Gaby, who wore a dark blue dress she'd bought that afternoon on the Boulevard de la Chapelle. Its color matched her eyes, and Michael thought she was as beautiful as any woman he'd ever known.

The sky had cleared, and the stars were out. In the polite glow of the succession of street lamps along the avenue, the Opera House-a majesty of columns, finials, and intricate carvings, the stone frontage shaded from pale gray to sea green-stood defiant of time and circ.u.mstance. Beneath its domed roof, on which stood statues of Pegasus at either end and a huge figure of Apollo with a lyre at its apex, music was the ruler instead of Hitler. Cars and carriages halted at the cavernous main entrance, debarking their pa.s.sengers. Michael said, "Stop here," and Mouse slid the Citroen to the curb with only a small grinding of gears. "You know what time to pick us up." He looked at his pocket watch and couldn't help but think of the capsule within.

"Yes," Mouse said. Camille had checked with the ticket office to find out precisely what time the third act would begin. At that time Mouse would have the car waiting in front of the opera.

It had occurred to both Michael and Gaby that Mouse could take the car and go anywhere he pleased, and Gaby had had some bad moments about this but Michael had calmed her. Mouse would be there on time, he'd told her, because Mouse wanted to get to Berlin, and what he'd done for them already was enough to condemn him to a nice torture session with the Gestapo. So, German or not, Mouse was on their side from here on out. On the other hand, if there was really any madness in Mouse, there was no telling how and when it might show itself.

Michael got out, came around the car, and opened the door for Gaby. He said, "Be here," and Mouse nodded and drove away. Then Michael offered Gaby his arm, and they strolled past a German soldier on horseback just like any French couple out for a night at the Opera. Except Michael wore a Luger in a holster that Camille had supplied, the pistol lying just under his left armpit, and Gaby had a very small, very sharp knife in her shiny black clutch purse. Arm in arm, they crossed the Avenue de L'Opera to the Opera House itself. In the huge vestibule, where gilded lamps cast a golden glow on statues of Handel, Lully, Gluck, and Rameau, Michael saw several n.a.z.i officers with their lady friends among the crowd. He guided Gaby through the throng, up ten steps of green Swedish marble, to a second vestibule where the tickets were sold.

They bought their tickets, two seats on the aisle near the back of the house, and continued through the building. Michael had never seen such an a.s.sembly of statues, multi-hued marble columns, gilt-edged mirrors, and chandeliers in his life; the grand staircase, a gracefully ma.s.sive thing with marble bal.u.s.trades, swept them up to the auditorium. Everywhere he looked there were more staircases, corridors, statues, and chandeliers. He hoped Gaby knew her way here, because in this place of art run riot even his wolf's sense of direction was stunned. At last they entered the auditorium, another marvel of s.p.a.ce and proportion which was rapidly filling, and they were shown to their seats by an elderly attendant.

The odors of conflicting perfumes stung Michael's nose. He noted it was chilly in the huge auditorium; due to fuel rationing, the building's boilers had been turned off. Gaby glanced casually around, noting where perhaps a dozen German officers sat with their female companions. Her gaze went up to the third of the four tiers of loges, stacked atop each other and connected by gilded balconies and fluted columns like the layers of a ma.s.sive and rather gaudy cake. She found Adam's loge. It was empty.

Michael had already seen it. "Patience," he said quietly. If Adam had found the note, he'd be here. If not... then not. He took Gaby's hand and squeezed it. "You look beautiful," he told her.

She shrugged, uneasy with compliments. "I don't dress this way very often."

"Neither do I." He wore a crisp white shirt along with his gray suit, a muted gray-and-scarlet-striped necktie, and a pearl stickpin that Camille had given him "for luck." He glanced up at the third tier; Adam still hadn't arrived, and the orchestra was tuning. A hundred things could have gone wrong, he thought. The Gestapo could have searched his coat when he got to work. The note could have fallen out. Adam simply could have hung the coat up and not even looked in the pocket. No, no, he told himself. Just wait, and watch.

The houselights dimmed. The heavy red curtains parted, and Puccini's tale of Fiona Tosca began.

As the desperate Tosca murdered her brutal tormentor with a knife at the end of Act II, Michael was aware of the pressure of Gaby's grip on his hand. He glanced again at the third tier. No Adam. d.a.m.n it! he thought. Well, Adam knew that he was being watched. Maybe he chose, for whatever reason, not to appear tonight. Act III began, a prison scene. The minutes ticked past. Gaby cast a quick look at Adam's loge-and Michael felt her fingers crunch his hand.

He knew. Adam was there.

"A man's standing in the loge," she whispered, her face close to his. He smelled the delicious apple-wine scent of her hair. "I can't tell what he looks like."

Michael gave it another moment. Then he glanced up and saw the sitting figure. The footlights, dimmed to a moody cast as Tosca visited her imprisoned lover Cavaradossi, glinted on the lenses of eyegla.s.ses. "I'm going upstairs," Michael whispered. "Wait here."

"No. I'm coming with you."

"Shhhhh!" the man behind them hissed.

"Wait here," Michael repeated. "I'll be back as soon as I can. If anything happens, I want you to get out." Before Gaby could protest again, he leaned forward and kissed her lips. An electricity pa.s.sed between them, a tingling of the nerves that connected them for a few seconds like raw wires. Then Michael stood up, walked purposefully up the aisle, and left the auditorium. Gaby stared at the stage, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, all her attention fixed on the deadly drama that was yet to be played out.

Michael ascended a series of wide staircases. An attendant, a young man in a white jacket, black trousers, and white gloves, stood on duty on the third tier. "May I help you, please?" he asked as Michael approached.

"No, thank you. I'm meeting a friend." Michael walked past him, found the rosewood door of loge number six, and rapped quietly on it. He waited. A latch was slid back. The door opened on bra.s.s hinges.

And there was the man called Adam, his eyes wide with terror behind his gla.s.ses. "I was followed," he said, his voice reedy and trembling. "They're all over the place."

Michael entered the loge and closed the door behind him. He slid the latch shut. "We don't have much time. What's your message?"

"Wait. Just wait." He held up a pale, long-fingered hand. "How do I know... you're not one of them? How do I know you're not trying to trick me?"

"I could recite the names of people you know back in London, if that would help. I don't think it will. You'll have to trust me. If you don't, we might as well forget this and I'll swim home across the Channel."

"I'm sorry. It's just that... I don't trust anyone. Not anyone."

"You'll have to start right now," Michael said.

Adam sank down in a red-cushioned chair. He leaned forward and ran a shaking hand across his face. He looked emaciated, about to pa.s.s out. Onstage, Cavaradossi was being escorted from his cell to face a firing squad. "Oh, G.o.d," Adam whispered. He blinked, his gla.s.ses reflecting the dank gray light. He looked up at Michael and drew a deep breath. "Theo von Frankewitz," Adam began. "Do you know who that is?"

"A sidewalk artist in Berlin."

"Yes. He's... a friend of mine. Back in February... he was called to do a special job. By an SS colonel named Jerek Blok, who used to be the commandant of-"

"Falkenhausen concentration camp, from May to December of 1943," Michael interrupted. "I've read Blok's dossier." As little as there was of it. Mallory had gotten him the dossier on Blok; it had told him only that Jerek Blok was forty-seven years old, born into a military and aristocratic German family, and that he was a n.a.z.i party fanatic. There had been no photograph. But now Michael felt like a raw nerve: Blok had been seen in Berlin with Harry Sandler. What was their connection, and how did the big-game hunter figure in this? "Go on."

"Theo... was taken to an airstrip, blindfolded and flown west. He thinks that was the direction, because of how the sun felt on his face. Perhaps an artist would remember such things. Anyway, Blok was with him, and there were other SS men, too. When they landed, Theo could smell the sea. He was taken to a warehouse. They kept Theo there for over two weeks, while he painted."

"Painted?" Michael stood toward the rear of the loge, positioning himself so he couldn't be seen from the auditorium. "Painted what?"

"Bullet holes." Adam's hands were white-knuckled on the armrests. "For more than two weeks he painted bullet holes on sections of metal. The sections were obviously part of a larger structure; they still had rivets in them. And someone had already painted the metal olive green." He looked quickly at Michael, then back to the stage. The orchestra was playing a funeral march as Cavaradossi refused a blindfold. "They had pieces of gla.s.s for Theo to paint, too. They wanted bullet holes in precise patterns, and what would look like cracks in the gla.s.s. Blok wasn't satisfied when Theo finished, and he made Theo do the gla.s.s all over again. Then they flew Theo back to Berlin, paid him a fee, and that was it."

"All right. So your friend painted some metal and gla.s.s. What's it mean?"

"I don't know, but it worries me." He ran the back of his hand across his mouth. "The Germans know the invasion's coming soon. Why are they spending time painting bullet holes on green metal? And there's this, too: another man came to visit the warehouse, and Blok showed him the work Theo was doing. Blok called this man Dr. Hildebrand. Do you know that name?"

Michael shook his head. Onstage, the soldiers of the firing squad were loading their muskets.

"Hildebrand's father created the chemical gases used by the Germans in the Great War," Adam said. "Like father, like son: Hildebrand owns a chemical manufacturing company, and he's the Reich's most vocal proponent of chemical and germ warfare. If Hildebrand's working on something... it could be used against the invasion."

"I see." Michael's stomach had knotted. If chemical gas sh.e.l.ls were dropped on the Allies during the invasion, thousands of soldiers would die. And adding to that tragedy was the stark fact that, once repulsed, the invasion of Europe might be delayed for years-time for Hitler to fortify the Atlantic Wall and create a new generation of weapons. "But I don't understand where Frankewitz fits in."

"I don't either. Once the Gestapo found my radio and destroyed it, I was cut off from all information. But this is something that must be followed up. If not..." He let the sentence hang, because Michael fully understood. "Theo overheard Blok and Hildebrand talking. They mentioned a phrase twice: Eisen Faust."

"Iron Fist," Michael translated.

A fist of flesh knocked at the loge's door. Adam jumped in his chair. Onstage, the firing squad lifted their rifles, and the orchestra played a dirge as Cavaradossi prepared to die.

"Monsieur?" It was the voice of the white-jacketed attendant. "A message for you."

Michael heard the tension in the young man's voice; the attendant was not alone. Michael knew what the message would be: an invitation from the Gestapo for a lesson in screaming. "Stand up," Michael told Adam.

Adam did-and at that instant the rosewood door was broken open by a man's husky shoulder as the muskets fired onstage. Cavaradossi sagged to the stage. The noise of the gunfire had masked the sound of the door splintering. Two men, both in the dark leather overcoats of the Gestapo, were shouldering their way into the loge. The man in front had a Mauser pistol in his hand, and he was the one Michael went for first.

Michael picked up the red-cushioned chair and smashed it across the man's head. The chair burst to pieces, and the man's face bleached white as blood spewed from his broken nose. He staggered, the gun coming up, and his finger twitched on the trigger. The bullet whined over Michael's shoulder, the noise obscured by the soprano wailing of Ninon Vallin's Tosca as she fell at Cavaradossi's corpse. Michael reached out, grasped the man's wrist and the front of his overcoat, twisted sharply, and lifted the man over his shoulder. He took a lunging step toward the gilded balcony and threw the gunman into s.p.a.ce.

The man shrieked, louder than Tosca had ever dreamed, as he fell fifty-two feet to the auditorium floor. For a second their voices blended in eerie harmony; then there were other screams, and the screaming spread like a contagion across the audience. The orchestra stopped in a shatter of broken notes. Onstage, valiant Ninon Vallin was desperately trying to continue her role, so close to the dramatic finale.

But Michael was determined it was not going to be his own swan song. The second man reached into his coat; before the gun could come out, Michael slammed his fist into the man's face and followed it with a blow to the throat. Strangling around a crushed windpipe, the man fell backward and crashed against the wall. But the loge's splintered doorway filled with a new figure: a third man in a pin-striped suit, a Luger in his right hand. Behind him was a soldier with a rifle. Michael shouted to Adam, "Grab on to my back!" and Adam did, putting his arms under Michael's shoulders and locking his fingers together. Adam was light, a hundred and thirty pounds if that; Michael saw the third man's eyes widen as he realized what was about to happen, and the Luger rose for a shot.

Michael leaped to his right and bounded over the balcony with Adam clinging to his back.

8.

He had no intention of following the first Gestapo agent's descent to the auditorium's floor; his fingers gripped the fluted finials of the gilded column that rose beside Adam's loge, and the muscles of his shoulders strained as he pulled himself and Adam up toward the topmost tier. A new chorus of screams and shrieks swept across the audience. Even Ninon Vallin cried out, whether in fear for a human life or rage at being upstaged, Michael couldn't tell. He hoisted them up, grabbing whatever handholds he could find. His heart pounded and the blood roared through his veins, but his brain was cool; whatever the future held, it was to be decided very quickly.

And so it was. He heard the vicious crack! of a gunshot-a Luger being fired at an upward angle. He felt Adam's body shudder and stiffen. The man's arms, already tightly clamped around him, in an instant became as rigid as iron bars. Warm wetness trickled through the back of Michael's hair and down his neck, drenching his suit jacket; he realized the bullet had just blown away a large portion of Adam's skull, and the muscles of the corpse had frozen in the sudden paralysis of severed nerves. He clambered up the column, a dead man locked on his back and blood trickling over the finials. He pulled himself over the balcony of the uppermost loge as a second bullet flayed away a shower of gold paint four inches from his right elbow.

"Up the stairs!" he heard the Gestapo agent shout. "Hurry!"

The loge Michael found himself in was unoccupied. He spent a few seconds trying to unlock Adam's fingers from where they were clenched together at his chest; he broke two of them like dry twigs, but the others resisted him. There was no time to fight a dead man's grip. Michael staggered through the door into the crimson-carpeted hallway outside and faced a warren of lamplit corridors and staircases. "This way!" he heard a man shout, from somewhere to his left. Michael turned to the right and staggered down a corridor lined with paintings of medieval hunting scenes. The corpse hung to his back, its shoe tips dragging furrows in the carpet. Behind them, Michael realized, was also a trail of blood. He stopped to thrash against the body; but all he did was burn up priceless energy, and the corpse remained latched to him like a lifeless Siamese twin.

A shot rang out. Just over Michael's shoulder, a lamp held by a statue of Diana exploded. He saw two soldiers coming after him, both armed with rifles. He tried to reach his Luger but couldn't get to it because of the corpse's grip. He turned and ran into another corridor, this one curving to the left. The voices of his pursuers shouted directions to each other, their Germanic snarls like the baying of hounds. Now the corpse's one hundred and thirty pounds seemed an eternal weight. He forced himself on, the corpse leaving smears of blood in the halls of beauty.

An ascending staircase was ahead of him, cherubs with lyres mounted on its bal.u.s.trades. Michael started toward it-and smelled the bitter scent of a stranger's sweat. A German soldier with a pistol stepped from a shadowed archway on his left. "Your hands," the soldier said. "Up." He motioned with the gun.

In the second that the barrel was uptilted, Michael kicked him in the right kneecap and heard the bones break. The pistol fired, its bullet thunking into the ceiling. The German, his face twisted with pain, staggered against the wall but didn't let go of the gun; he began to take aim, and Michael leaped at him as Adam dragged on his shoulders. He caught the German's wrist. Again the gun fired, but the bullet pa.s.sed Michael's cheek and smashed something on the other side of the corridor. The German gouged at Michael's eyes with hooked fingers and screamed, "I've got him! Help me! I've got him!"

Even with a broken knee, the soldier was strong. They fought in the hallway, grappling for the gun. The soldier struck Michael in the jaw with a blow that stunned him and made him see double for a few seconds, but he held on to the gun hand. Michael delivered a punch that hit the German in the mouth and knocked two teeth down his throat, strangling his screams for help. The German brought a knee up into Michael's stomach, driving the breath out of him, and the corpse's weight pulled Michael off balance. He fell backward, hitting the wall with a force that cracked Adam's ruined skull against the marble. The soldier, balancing desperately on one leg, raised his Luger to shoot Michael at point-blank range.

Behind the German Michael saw a whirl of dark blue, like a tornado unfurling. A knife glittered with chandelier light. Its blade plunged down into the back of the soldier's neck. The man choked and staggered, dropping his pistol to clutch his throat. Gaby wrenched at the knife, but it had gone in too deeply. She let it go, and the soldier made a terrible moaning noise and crashed face down.

Gaby blinked, stunned at the sight before her: Michael, his hair b.l.o.o.d.y and gore spattered over one side of his face, and clutched to his back an openmouthed corpse that had a pulpy mess where the right temple had been. Her stomach churned. She picked up the gun, her knife hand smeared with scarlet, as Michael found his balance again.

"Geissen!" a man shouted from down the corridor. "Where the h.e.l.l are you?"

Gaby helped Michael try to unlock the corpse's fingers, but they could hear the noise of more soldiers approaching. The only route available to them was the ascending staircase. They started up it, Michael's legs beginning to cramp under Adam's weight. The staircase curved and took them to a latched door. As Gaby threw back the latch and pulled the door open, the night wind of Paris rushed into their faces. They had reached the roof of the Opera House.

The tips of Adam's polished black shoes sc.r.a.ped the tarred stones as Michael followed Gaby across the Opera's huge roof. Gaby looked back and saw figures emerging from the doorway they'd come through. She knew there had to be other ways down, but how long would it take the Germans to cover all the exits? She hurried on, but had to wait for Michael; his strength was ebbing, his back beginning to bow. "Go on!" he snapped. "Don't wait for me!"

She waited, her heart pounding, as she watched for the figures coming after them. When Michael had caught up with her again, she turned and started off. They neared the front of the roof, with the sprawling, glittering city spread around them in all directions. The ma.s.sive statue of Apollo rose from the roof's apex, and pigeons took flight as Michael and Gaby approached. Michael felt his legs weakening; he was holding Gaby back. He stopped, supporting himself and Adam's weight against the base of Apollo. "Keep going," he told Gaby when she paused again. "Find a way down."

"I'm not leaving you," she said, staring at him with her sapphire eyes.

"Don't be a fool! This isn't the time or place for argument." He heard the men shouting back and forth to each other, coming closer. He got his hand into his coat-and touched not his own Luger, which was trapped in its holster, but the poisoned pocket watch. His fingers gripped it, but he couldn't make himself bring it out. "Go!" he told her.

"I'm not leaving," Gaby said. "I love you."

"No, you don't. You love the memory of a moment. You don't know anything about me-and you wouldn't want to." He glanced at the figures, approaching cautiously about thirty yards away. They hadn't yet seen him or Gaby underneath the statue. The pocket watch was ticking, and time was running out. "Don't throw your life away," he said. "Not for me. Not for anybody."

She hesitated, and Michael could see the strain on her face. She glanced at the oncoming Germans, then back to Michael. Maybe she did only love the memory of a moment-but what was life, if not simply the memory of moments? He pulled the pocket watch free and popped it open. The cyanide capsule awaited his choice. "You've done what you can," he told her. "Now go." And he shook the capsule into his mouth. She saw his throat convulse as he swallowed the pill. He grimaced.

"Over here! Here they are!" one of the men shouted. A pistol fired, and the bullet knocked sparks off Apollo's thigh. Michael Gallatin shivered and fell to his knees, with Adam's weight atop him. He looked up at Gaby, his face sparkling with sweat.

She couldn't stand to watch him die. Another shot was fired, and it zipped by close enough to unthaw her legs. She turned away from Michael Gallatin, tears streaming down her cheeks, and she ran. About fifty feet from where Michael lay dying, Gaby's shoe hit the hand grip of a trapdoor. She pulled it open and looked down at a ladder. Then another glance toward Michael; the figures were surrounding him, victors of the hunt. It was all Gaby could do to keep from firing into their midst, but they'd surely shoot her to pieces. She went down the ladder, and the trapdoor closed over her head.

Six German soldiers and three Gestapo men stood around Michael. The man who'd blown Adam's head open sneered. "Now we've got you, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

Michael spat out the pill he'd been holding in his mouth. Under Adam's corpse, his body shivered. p.r.i.c.kles of pain shot through his nerves. The Gestapo agent was reaching down for him, and Michael surrendered himself to the change.

It was like stepping from a secure shelter into a maelstrom of wild winds-a conscious choice, and once decided, difficult to reverse. He felt the primeval shriek in his bones as his spine bowed, and with a thunder that boomed in his head, his skull and face began to alter their shape. He shivered, and moaned uncontrollably.

The Gestapo agent's hand froze in midair. One of the soldiers laughed. "He's begging for mercy!" the man said.

"Get up!" The Gestapo man stepped back. "Get up, you swine!"

The moaning changed pitch. It lost its human element and turned b.e.s.t.i.a.l.

"Bring a light!" the Gestapo agent shouted. He didn't know what was wrong with the man who crouched before him, but he didn't care to stand any closer. "Somebody get a light on h-"

There was the noise of ripping cloth, and cracking sounds of bones being broken. The soldiers stepped back, and the one who'd laughed now wore a fractured grin. One of the soldiers produced a hand torch, and the Gestapo agent fumbled to switch it on. Before him something heaved, laboring under the stiff corpse at his feet. His hands shook; he couldn't get the balky switch clicked. "d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l!" he shouted-and then the switch moved, and the light came on.

He saw what was there, and his breath froze.

h.e.l.l had shining green eyes and a sleek, muscular body covered with gray-streaked, black hair. h.e.l.l had white fangs, and h.e.l.l moved on all fours.

The beast shook violently, a powerful motion that broke the corpse's arms like matchsticks and threw the body aside. It cast off, as well, the last of its human masquerade: a blood-covered gray suit, white shirt with the tie still knotted in the ripped collar, underwear, socks, and shoes. Amid the debris was a holster that held a Luger; the beast had deadlier weapons.

"Oh... my..." The Gestapo agent never got to call on his deity; Hitler was absent, and G.o.d knew the meaning of justice. The beast sprang, its jaws gaping, and as it hit the Gestapo agent its teeth were already sinking into the throat and ripping away flesh and arteries in a crimson shower of carnage.

All but two of the soldiers and one of the other Gestapo agents shrieked and fled for their lives. A German soldier ran the wrong way-not toward the doorway but toward the street. He ended there, on a crushed note. The second Gestapo man, a heroic fool, lifted his Mauser pistol to fire at the beast as it whirled toward him; the fierce green glare of its eyes hypnotized him for perhaps a half second, and that was much too long. The beast leaped upon him, claws making a b.l.o.o.d.y tatters of the man's face, and the man's strangled, lipless scream shocked the two soldiers from their trances. They ran, too, one of them falling and tangling the second in his legs.

Michael Gallatin raged. He snapped the air, his jaws cracking together. Blood was dripping from his muzzle, its hot perfume heightening his abandon. A human mind calculated in the skull of the wolf, and his eyes saw not the darkness of night but a gray-hazed twilight in which blue-edged figures ran for the doorway, their screams like the high squeals of hunted rats. Michael could hear the panicked beating of their hearts-a military drum corps hammering at an insane speed. The smell of their sweat had sausage and schnapps in it. He bounded forward, his muscles and sinews moving like the fine gears of a killing machine, and he turned on the soldier who was trying to struggle to his feet; Michael looked into the German's face, and in a split second judged him a youth, no more than seventeen. An innocent corrupted by a rifle and a book called Mein Kampf. Michael seized the boy's left hand in his jaws and crushed the fingers without breaking the skin, removing the possibility of further corruption by rifle. Then, as the boy screamed and flailed at him, Michael turned away and bounded across the roof after the others.

One of the soldiers stopped to fire his pistol; the bullet ricocheted off the stones to Michael's left, but did not slow him. As the soldier spun around to flee, Michael jumped up and slammed into the man's back, knocking him aside like a scarecrow. Then Michael landed nimbly, and kept going in a blur of motion. He saw the others barreling into the door that led down the staircase, and in another few seconds they would be throwing the latch. The last man was about to squeeze through; the door was already closing, and the Germans were hollering and trying to pull him in. Michael lowered his head and propelled himself forward.

He leaped, skewing his body in midair, and crashed against the door. It flew open, knocking the Germans down the stairs in a tangle of arms and legs. He landed amid them, clawing and tearing with fevered indiscrimination; then he left them behind, b.l.o.o.d.y and broken, as he raced down the stairs and through the corridors still marked with the furrows of Adam's shoe tips.

As he came down the sweeping staircase from the main auditorium, he met the crowd that milled in confusion and shouted for refunds. As Michael bounded down the stairs, the shouting ceased; the silence, however, didn't last long. A fresh wave of shrieks crashed against the Opera's marbled walls, and men and women in their elegant attire jumped over the bal.u.s.trades like swabbies off the sides of a torpedoed battleship. Michael leaped down the last six steps, his paws skidding across the green marble as he landed, and a bearded aristocrat with an ivory cane blanched and stumbled backward, a wet spot spreading across the front of his trousers.

Michael ran, the power and exhilaration singing in his blood. His heart pumped steadily, his lungs bellowed, his sinews worked like iron springs. He snapped left and right, scaring back those who were too dumbfounded to move. Then he was streaking through the final vestibule, clearing a path of screams, and onto the street. He raced under the belly of a carriage horse, which reared and danced madly. Michael glanced back, over his shoulder; a few people had run out after him, but the panicked horse was in their midst and they scattered away from the pounding hooves.

There was a fresh shriek: worn brakes, and tires clenching stones. Michael looked ahead and saw a pair of lights rushing at him. Without a hesitation, he bounded off the ground and up over the car's front fender and hood. He had an instant to see two shocked faces behind the windshield, and then Michael scrambled up over the top of the car, down the other side, and raced away across the Avenue de' L'Opera.

"My G.o.d!" Mouse gasped as the Citroen shuddered to a stop. He looked at Gaby. "What was that?"

"I don't know." She was stunned, and her mind seemed to be full of rusted gears. She saw people coming out of the Opera House, among them several German officers, and she said, "Go!"

Mouse hit the accelerator, swerved the car around, and tore away from the Opera, leaving a backfire and a poot of blue smoke as his last salute.